Stephen Garcia

Stephen Garcia is a professor in the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis. He was previously professor of psychology and professor of organizational studies at the University of Michigan, where he also held faculty appointments at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and Stephen M. Ross School of Business.

Garcia is an expert on the psychology of competition and a scholar in the field of judgment and decision-making. He is the lead editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Psychology of Competition (2023), the first of its kind volume to organize the literature on the psychology of competition across multiple fields of psychology – from biopsychology and neuroscience to social, personality, and organizational psychology to educational, cognitive, and sports psychology.

His work has been published in leading journals across the behavioral sciences, including psychology (Psychological Science, Perspectives on Psychological Science), social psychology (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Social Psychological and Personality Science), organizational behavior (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Applied Psychology), marketing (Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology), judgment and decision making (Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Judgment and Decision Making) and the law (Journal of Empirical Legal Studies).

His work has likewise been covered by the international press, including The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times (of London), The Globe and Mail, Der Spiegel, Telemundo, The Times of India and more.

Garcia currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, where he is also an incoming Associate Editor, and the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. He is an Elected Fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and an Elected Member of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. Garcia is a graduate of Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton.